FAIRLEE, Vt. (AP) – When Jay Barrett canoed the Connecticut River as a boy in the late 1950s, his mother told him two things. “Wear your life preserver, and don’t touch the water.”
Barrett and his older brother would paddle past pools of scum and pipes dumping raw sewage into the river. Tires, appliances, car parts and more dotted the banks.
Today, Barrett, chairman of the Fairlee Select Board, is helping to renovate a historic railroad station into a welcome center for tourists traveling the Connecticut River Scenic Byway – a route showing the beauty of a now-clean river that divides Vermont and New Hampshire and stretches 410 miles from the Canadian border to the Atlantic Ocean.
“The thing that fascinates me is how our attitudes toward the river have changed,” Barrett said.The change is due in part to the Connecticut River Joint Commissions, a two-state group interested in conserving the 271-mile stretch of river in Vermont and New Hampshire.
the CRJC and its five regional subcommittees completed a corridor management plan for the river in 1997.
Many riverfront towns have built sewage treatment plants and adopted 100-foot or 200-foot development setbacks from the river. Educational programs have been held; land has been conserved, including 20,000 acres of former Champion paper company timberlands; and a book on the river, “Proud to Live Here,” was even published.
Railroad stations in Fairlee and St. Johnsbury have been redeveloped into river welcome centers.
Three main tributaries to the Connecticut – the Sleeper, Passumpsic and Moose rivers – meet in St. Johnsbury. “We really want to welcome people to the community, and we want to show off a little bit,” said Joel Schwartz, director of development for the town, said of the local welcome center.
In Fairlee, an 1850 railroad station that shut down in the 1970s will also be renovated into a welcome center.
“It’s been a project in town everyone has been very supportive of,” Barrett said. The Fairlee center is expected to open next year.
AP-ES-09-21-03 1225EDT
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